Bringing The Sage To Life
Brand archetypes allow businesses to attribute specific values and characteristics to themselves to attract potential customers who share those same values. In this article, we’ll define what it means to be The Sage and how adopting The Sage’s characteristics can help your business start creating lifelong connections with its audience.
Your brand is known to be
Your brand is known to beConsistently trustworthy, wise and intelligent
Your brand is driven by
A deep-seated drive to learn about your world and share that knowledge with others
Your brand enjoys
Being analytical, thoughtful and knowledgeable about every part of your industry
You should avoid
Focussing on your own intelligence and focusing on being a trusted source of information instead
Unsure what archetype your brand is?
Take Pixeld’s Brand Archetype Assessment and find out.
Becoming The Sage
So, how do you actually begin the process of taking on a brand archetype? Here are some key archetype insights, designed to help you begin the journey towards becoming the authority on all things industry-related.
- You should help people solve problems in a way that feels like you’re a friend, not an encyclopaedia.
- Your communication should be solution-oriented, consisting of clear, engaging and relevant information.
- You should create content that represents your expertise and authority within your area of expertise.
- Your tone of voice should be informative and knowledgeable without being self-focused.
- You should offer insights grounded in deep expertise and truth.
- Your logo and look & feel play an important role in establishing your business as a Sage brand – ensure they are consistent.
It’s important to remember that the Sage isn’t an emotionless, information-driven brand. By offering your knowledge, your business is creating deep loyalty with its audience. So don’t stop showing up as that trusted, reliable source of information – you’re establishing a deep emotional bond with them, even if you can’t see it.
Winning against other Sage brands
But how do you win when there are several Sage brands in your industry? To answer this question, we need to focus on the audience. Every Sage business aims to communicate with people looking for a trusted source of information and authority on a topic. It’s crucial to understand that audiences are quick to identify intelligent brands committed to helping them. They are equally adept at identifying Sage brands that are less committed, and who fall short when the audience needs them.
Becoming the leading Sage brand in your industry means committing to consistency, accuracy and dependability as a source of current industry information. You’ll achieve this by allocating time to staying up-to-date on the latest information in your field, and crafting that information into engaging content that your audience will genuinely benefit from. When creating content, a Sage brand should get straight to the point and give people what they want – trusted information.
The Sage’s key content includes –
- Latest industry news and innovations
- Blog articles featuring statistics and proof points
- Research whitepapers and studies
Learning from leading Sage brands
The most popular Sage brand is undoubtedly Google, which consistently establishes itself as the world’s preferred provider of answers, solutions, and information.
Google uses a friendly and relevant tone while establishing a sense of authority. They always aim to express confidence and expertise in a straightforward and concise way. To further instil its Sage characteristics, Google chose a clean, modern logo that is simple, functional, and approachable.
In their communication, Google’s ‘Year in Search’ videos embody everything they stand for. The campaign highlights how they help people gain insights and answers to questions, while establishing the brand as the most trusted, relevant and current search option.
The Sage as a person
The second you hear David Attenborough’s voice, you know you’re about to embark on an information-laden journey through the natural world. Mr Attenborough is another perfect example of a Sage. But he’s not just knowledgable and authoritative. David is an expert in drawing us into his world and keeping us glued to our screens. Here’s how he does it, and how you can too –
- Make sure your audience can feel your passion. Communicate in a way that conveys your enthusiasm – not just about the topic but about how passionate you are to share the knowledge you have.
- Don’t just impart information – tell a story by communicating the information simply and compellingly. Just because it’s information doesn’t mean it can’t carry emotion.
- Make sure that facts and figures back everything you say. This will establish you as trustworthy.
- Be consistent. Establishing yourself as the authority on a subject means being a consistent source of information your audience can begin to rely on.
There we have it – the building blocks of implementing the Sage archetype into your business. Of course, we can fit only so much into an article. As digital marketing experts, we’ve helped to identify and implement brand archetypes into businesses of all types, igniting their marketing and brand communication. So, when you’re ready to push your business further, get in touch with us today.
